7 Stellar Social Apps by Phyllis Khare
I
think it might be a good idea to define “social”. To me, calling an app “social” implies that it has built-in ways to have a conversation, to find similar people with similar interests, and to rank or review. Take Facebook, for example—you can chat with friends, search for similar people by keyword, and click that famous “Like” button. There are also apps that let you create content to send out to your established social networks, like Twitter and Facebook. These apps are important to the social media landscape, so I have included some of them here as well. In the September-October 2012 issue, I gathered some of the best social apps from several prominent figures in the social media field. In this article, I’ll go over some of their most interesting suggestions, plus a few tried-andtrue apps for you to explore. Tweegram (Free, app2.me/5044) It’s a visual world. These days, even text is best shown as an image. It’s interesting how this has developed in the last few years. Between Instagram and Pinterest, almost every post I see in any social app is a visual one. With this app, you can create an image with words and a nice set of stationary backgrounds. Put your text on some stationary and post to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. If you decide to upgrade from the free version, it’s $1.99. Follow the developers on Twitter; they hand out free promo codes for the PRO version weekly. Thanks to Gina Schreck (@ginaschreck) for sharing this app with me. Even though this app isn’t social in and of itself, it allows you to create something different to share on your social sites, which is nice once in a while.
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Instagram (Free, app2.me/3183) This is certainly the sweetheart of the social photography apps at the moment. Take a picture, add a filter, and share it with the world. People can “heart” it (like it) and leave comments. You can browse through popular images, find and follow photographers, and engage in conversations with the photographer and other fans of the image. It satisfies all the criteria for a truly social app, even though it is listed as a photography app. There are a lot of apps that connect with this one, like Instachimp, Instadrop, Hipstamatic, and so on. There are some amazing articles in iPhone Life that delve deeply into these types of apps. If this is your favorite genre, check out this issue’s article “From Capture to Presentation” by Jonathan Marks. Postagram Postcards (Free, app2.me/5045) This app connects with your images on your device, your Instagram photos, and your photos on Facebook. Between all of those places, you should have access to a lot of photos. Choose one and create a “postagram” to send to people who are NOT on Instagram and Facebook—like, say, your greatgrandparents. You will need to enter your credit card number in order to send these out. This app expands your social connection into the “real world” with hardcopy postcards. Old-school meets high-tech!